something lame, dead-end, a dud, insignificant; especially something with high expectations that turns out to be average, pathetic, or overhyped.
"much to the team's dismay, the number one pick in this year's draft turned out to be a nothingburger"
#lame #dead-end #dud #overrated #nothing burger

The sh*t hit the fan over the weekend & was bipartisan (Russian interference through hacking & leaks). Who knows where all this is leading. I've been thinking for a long time that there must be a lot of individuals in upper echelons of gov't. who know this election is a disastrous outcome for the US, but what to do?

I'm reading a very good (and very long) article in the New York Times about Russia's hacking into various political organizations with the intent of swaying the election. It gives some insight into why Obama waited so long to let this go public (I'm not saying that was the right decision).

"They will wrestle with, among other things, Mr. Putin’s motive.

Did he seek to mar the brand of American democracy, to forestall anti-Russian activism for both Russians and their neighbors? Or to weaken the next American president, since presumably Mr. Putin had no reason to doubt American forecasts that Mrs. Clinton would win easily? Or was it, as the C.I.A. concluded last month, a deliberate attempt to elect Mr. Trump?

In fact, the Russian hack-and-dox scheme accomplished all three goals.

What seems clear is that Russian hacking, given its success, is not going to stop. Two weeks ago, the German intelligence chief, Bruno Kahl, warned that Russia might target elections in Germany next year. “The perpetrators have an interest to delegitimize the democratic process as such,” Mr. Kahl said. Now, he added, “Europe is in the focus of these attempts of disturbance, and Germany to a particularly great extent.”

But Russia has by no means forgotten its American target. On the day after the presidential election, the cybersecurity company Volexity reported five new waves of phishing emails, evidently from Cozy Bear, aimed at think tanks and nonprofits in the United States.

One of them purported to be from Harvard University, attaching a fake paper. Its title: “Why American Elections Are Flawed.”

This is an article not by a paper but pulls together Trump, Putin, and oil in a very understandable way. Another article I ran across talked about this being the biggest deal of the century. Russia relies on oil money. Oil prices are depressed.

"Russians can get oil out of easy places. Easy places are drying up. Exxon Mobil is good at getting it out of difficult places and the resources to handle really big projects. Exxon Mobil wants a place to drill and make serious money. So Exxon Mobil hooks up with the Russians to supply the rest of the world with a century's worth of energy in a 500 billion dollar deal to drill the Arctic. Only the USA is big enough to get in the way.

The answer is a big gamble and one super salesman with no socially acceptable morals offers a way to get the climate huggers and everybody else out of the way. This guy needs the bucks. His financial liabilities match his assets and he finds himself in some trouble that way.

So The Donald tries a moon shot and is about to pull it off. His take from this thing is Tchump change for Exxon Mobil and the Russians. And those folks will likely stiff Trump once they stop needing him. The future of America and the rest of the world are being sold to a few predator oligarchs and we are sitting here and doing little more than wring our hands and let it happen. Worse than that America is setting itself up to abandon democracy and freedom in favor of radical nationalism and new forms of economic hardship, oppression and control. "

6 Questions We Would Have Asked Donald Trump At His Canceled Press Conference

President-elect Donald Trump promised a press conference Thursday to clarify the role he would have with his international business entanglements after he becomes president.

He canceled.

The transition team said Monday that Trump is delaying his "announcement" until January. Later that night, Trump took to his favorite medium to go around the filter — Twitter — and made some news about his plans

But we have questions related to his businesses — and otherwise. Here's what five of our top reporters and correspondents, who cover business, politics and the White House, would have asked — and would welcome answers to.

— Domenico Montanaro, political editor

It’s been 140 days since Donald Trump’s last press conference. In the meantime, he’s tweeted 1,456 times.
Why does this matter?

Unlike other ways of getting messages out, press conferences hold public officials more accountable to the American people because they have to answer questions in an uncontrolled environment

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump makes a speech nearly every day. But in graduation season, a number of commencement speakers have used their time at the podium to challenge him and his rhetoric. Here are the highlights from Ken Burns, Matt Damon, Lin-Manuel Miranda and more. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

And scary - I haven't read through all these but they look interesting and alarming:

"China should plan to take Taiwan by force and make swift preparations for a military incursion, a Communist party-controlled newspaper has said, after US president-elect Donald Trump broke decades of diplomatic protocol in the region."

And the United States—the leader of the democratic world, the coordinating entity of all the treaties that enforce a world order that Putin experiences as constraining—has elected a president who admiringly adopts Putin’s foreign policy as his own and even often seems to share Putin’s scorn for democratic norms at home.

Friends and critics incessantly credit Trump with playing three-dimensional or five-dimensional or eight-dimensional chess. But maybe the proper analogy for Trump’s foreign policy is derived from a different game: poker. There’s a saying that there’s a patsy at every poker table. And at this poker table, Donald Trump is the one who doesn’t know who the patsy is.

Opponents, however, see the birth of a neo-Dark Age — one that, as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to move into the White House, is a harbinger of the power of populism to upend a Western society. In merely a year, critics say, the nationalists have transformed Poland into a surreal and insular place — one where state-sponsored conspiracy theories and de facto propaganda distract the public as democracy erodes.

Under the 45th president, it cannot be business as usual for the media, for Congress or for any citizen who values our liberties. We are in for a very dangerous national ride...

But given Trump’s relentless public praise for Putin and the derision he has directed at those who mistrust Russia and its intentions (our president-elect called those who disagree with his Russia policies “stupid”), the accusations need to be dealt with very seriously and investigated meticulously. If we have learned nothing else, we know that Trump’s denials can never be believed until they are independently confirmed. The new standard for presidential statements must be: “Mistrust and verify.”...

And so much else in Trump’s often nasty encounter with reporters was, quite simply, petrifying...

At heart, Obama’s speech was a warning and a plea: an alert about the dangers our democracy confronts and a call for Americans to be active and vigilant in protecting our liberties.

There has been so much going on, it is overwhelming. That the Republicans in the House tried to shut down the independent Office of Congressional Ethics by secret vote is horrifying (outrage made them walk it back). They passed a whole bunch of new rules to show where their ethics are headed. And it isn't good.

One of the changes:
"House GOP rules package bars CBO from counting spikes in deficit spending spurred by an ACA repeal."